Berlioz: Grande messe des morts

Advantages: Colourful and always exciting
Disadvantages: absolutely none

...works for the state, the Requiem or "Grande messe des morts" and "Te Deum" feature enormous orchestras and choruses (the Requiem's Dies Irae alone featuring batteries of trumpets in all four corners of the church blasting away at each other and are then succeeded by the simultaneous drumming of eight pairs of timpani, creating an unforgettable wave of sound). As an opera composer he had less of a success. His first opera, "Les Francs-Juges" only exists in fragments; Benvenuto Cellini was a total failure; the four hour "Les Troyens" after Virgil's Aeneas, was so huge that it was forced to be separated into two parts, and was even then performed only in part at the wholly unsuitable Opéra Comique, only receiving its first complete performance in the 1950's, a hundred years later; and the Shakespeare-based "Béatrice et Benedict" came so late... Read review

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Advantages: The experience of getting inside an artistic head
Disadvantages: French not quite idiomatic

...This 1995 CD was the Bulgarian mezzo soprano opera singer Vesselina Kasarova's first solo album. She was only 30 years old then, but age is not necessarily the arbitor of thoughtfulness. It is telling that despite of the French's tendency to be very picky of how their language is sung, this CD won the Prix Maurice Ravel despite of some pretty iffy French intonations. This singer is just so expressive and so mesmerizing in her singing of the emotionally loaded French song cycles (all quite over-recorded by all the prominent artists already, especially for the Berlioz 'Summer Nights' Cycle), that imperfect French diction is really an insignificant flaw. There is a detached quality to this recital. As if she is lost in her own thoughts, not quite aware of the presence of an audience (or the recording microphone, in this case). Listening... Read review

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Advantages: Great performances of popular favourites and some rare gems
Disadvantages: Barely none, with perhaps slight issues with sound.

.... As is appropriate, there is quite a lot of Berlioz included, for he is one of the greatest orchestrators that ever was and his music really defines what "colour" in music is. There are two selections from the "dramatic legend" La Damnation de Faust (a strange cantata-opera-symphony hybrid), beginning with the "Ballet de Sylphes," a light and fairy-like little waltz, giving ample proof that Berlioz could write music subtle as wind when he wanted to. The following "Menuet des feux follets" is likewise sweetly light, but features little surges of drama appropriate in a witches' sabbath, which allows the good humour of drunken dancing to sweep the section to a close. To cap off the sensitive Berlioz, there is the subtle and magical "Queen Mab Scherzo" from his "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette that is filled with quicksilver movement, magical feeling... Read review

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